What’s the World’s Fastest Car?

You’re in that age-old debate with your buddies, trying to decide which one of your dream cars is the fastest. Your friend insists on the Hennessey Venom GT, which can pull a cool 0-60 in 2.5 seconds with a top speed of 260 mph and a price tag of just under a million ($950,000 to be exact- cheap, right?).

“For shame,” you say! You’ve heard that the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport goes from 0-60 in 2.4 seconds with a top speed of 267 mph! Sure, it costs $1.7 million, which also makes it one of the most expensive cars in the world, but who cares? We’re talking dream cars, and money is no object.

So which one of you is right? What is the fastest car in the world?

It turns out the both of you can eat your heart out.

According to Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), which sets rules on vehicles competing for land-speed records, the world’s fastest automobile is currently the “ThrustSCC,” which clocks-in at a blistering 763.035 mph. To put that in perspective, the sound barrier broken at 761.2 mph! That means that this freaking car is going so fast that it will probably knock you out with a sonic boom if you’re anywhere near it while its accelerating. Of course, it’s kind of hard to call it a “car” when it’s powered by after-burning Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines, which just happen to be the same engines used in the British F-4 Phantom II jet fighter. Basically, if you put wings on this thing, it could literally fly (and faster than any commercial jet!).

Driven (or perhaps, more appropriately “piloted”) by Royal Air Force fighter pilot Wing Commander Andy Green, and developed by Richard Noble and his team of engineers, the ThrustSCC was the first car to officially break the sound barrier on October 15, 1997 in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

Watch the video of this historic event here (just don’t blink!):

So what kind of gas mileage does this 54 foot long, 12 feet wide, 10.5 ton “car” get? Just under 4.8 gallons per second (or roughly equivalent to your average SUV). That’s ok though, because it’ll probably get you to work in about 2 seconds.

If you you’re not impressed with the ThrustSCC’s speed, don’t worry. The British team behind this turbocharged bit of automotive mayhem is busy making the “Bloodhound SCC,” which according to misinformed sources, will travel so fast that it actually goes back in time. So depending on how you look at it, the BloodhoundSCC might actually currently be the fastest car in the world.

To see how “BLOODHOUND Project” director Richard Noble is inspiring young British school children to become scientists and engineers by to making their own Lilliputian light speed vehicles, check out the following video (sadly, our US schools are too fuddy-duddy to ever let students make their own 100 mph playground missiles- but it would be awesome!):

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